SimRacing.org.uk

Car: Radical SR8
Track: Brands Hatch (Indy)

Practice: 18:00 for 150 mins (approx)
Qualifying: 20:30 (15 mins)
Race: 20:45 80 laps (approx 60 mins)

Start: Rolling - standard iRacing double file start
No fast tows will be available

Pit Stops: You must make a minimum of one pit stop during which you must take on at least 1 litre of fuel and/or change at least two tyres. You cannot take a mandatory stop at the end of the pace lap, or with less than 1 lap to go.

Password: see above (#post_event_password)
(2) Driver lists can be found on the championship standings page (https://www.simracing.org.uk/smf/index.php?action=LM2R;group=264;theme=33)

Don't know whether I can make this one. Wife's birthday, but she says she doesn't want to go out on the day/night itself, so there is hope for me to attend still. ;) If only these races were on Sunday evening, it would make life a lot easier in general. ;)  :shifty: :whistling:

Do do realise the Misses will have a birthday on Sunday before she has another on a Tuesday, don't you ;)

I've moved the Sunday discussion to it's own thread.

Practice server is up.

I jumped into the server but the Rad felt super-weird after driving the Mustang for the last couple of days!

I'm sure all will click tomorrow....

I had a same sort of problem, driven the Indycar, the last season and half and not mazda, and found it soo much more difficult to drive, after so long away.

It's been affected by the tyre damping change don't forget.  You might find you need a bit more damping than before.

Wasn't very enthisiastic about this but after trying it last night!... I sort of love it!
In a masochistic sort of way! :)

Really fun but tricky!

Have a high wing set up for consistent 44's or a low wing set up for inconsistent 43's!? :)
Tricky choice!  ;)

Should be a laugh!

I tried more wing but all it gave me was understeer, not consistency. ::)

EDIT: Practice results (http://members.iracing.com/membersite/member/EventResult.do?subsessionid=2677702)

After some solo practice last night, it looks like I'm OK for pace, looking forward to it :)

Not feeling too confident despite this being a lot of fun - think I'm over-driving somewhat and struggling to rein it in and be quick.

According to the results, apparently even iRacing thinks I'm an invalid.

Well, they had to find out eventually... ;)

How many laps Pops?

Let's have a nice round 80 laps :) (announcement updated).

I'm glad I stuck with the Mustang last night, I managed a 2nd in class in a Grand-Am race. Fair enough the opposition wasn't up to much but I'll take a podium any day!

Ah yes, podiums.  I remember them. :)

I can't !  ;D

No other option so shall be joining in tonight. Found the baseline setup which better suits me and i think that tyre damping change has improved things no end. I feel like i actually have tyres attached to the steering now. Still means i'm slow though!

And I am still stuck at work and wont be home until at least 9. Gutted  :'(

Your job sucks Paul :(

In happier news... the servers up!

Sorry to hear that Paul.

I've been given the green light to race as the Mrs wants to read the new books she's been waiting for (that she got for her birthday today). ;D

Well Planned ;D

My PC appears to have gone completely bonkers tonight  ???

No praccy + bonkers PC = Pops not racing :(

Gah!

So sorry Martin about spinning you round - dunno what happened there, I thought you were back on the powere and then I caught you up :(  Hope you got away without damage.

After that, I don't know if it was loss of concentration, or some damage from the aforementioned love tap, but I span it under power twice before getting crying over the baby monitor ... and decided better of it.

In retrospect, I probably shouldn't have raced this evening ... although it was one of the Radical races I was better prepared for.  My youngest isn't very well so I've been up and down the strairs throughout practice and qually, and a little distracted through the race .....

:(

An eventful one for me.

Started 4th but got mugged at the start, nearly lost it through paddock after a bit of rough and tumble but somehow managed to hold it.

Tried to keep up with Mike but my race pace wasn't what it was in practice last night  ??? anyway, pitted at about half distance and came out in traffic with Gary, Paul and Bernie just ahead.  I took advantage when Paul let Gary through and planned to do similar when Bernie did the same, I got alongside into paddock but made a hash of my downshifts and we collided (no hard feelings I hope Bernie).

After this I set about trying to reel Paul back in but was only taking a tenth here and there.  Coming up behind Martin, he spun at T2 and I aimed for the gap on the inside, I thought I had enough room but had the merest scrape as I went by, bent steering race over.

Not my finest hour, but enyoyable nevertheless.

Grats to Gary on another fine win and all finishers.

BTW forgot to save a replay before quitting out.  Does anyone have one they can share?  Cheers.

Great racing guys. I was gutted to miss the race but really enjoyed spectating :)

Great drive for the win Gary and Mike and Dave going at it for 2nd & 3rd :)

Another dull race from my car. Being just above average in speed is an absolute killer for having anyone to race. I wish I was either a lot faster or a lot slower cause this seems to happen to me quite a bit. ;D I finished 5th in the end, but only because there were only 2 more drivers that finished the race at all behind me. Oh dear.

After the first few laps I was never under any pressure from anyone and had no chance of catching anyone else. 75 laps of drone drone drone hairdryer racing. Get the drift yet. ;) Near the end I span at paddock cause I tried to drive it one handed whilst having a drink of water. Apparently paddock hill isn't the place to try it one-handed. :D. That was the excitement of the race for me (after lap 1).

Well done podium, see you at Zandvoort.

Tough combo that....

I was surprised to get pole but even more surprised when Paul kept pushing ahead on the parade lap...  The pace car pulled in the pits and he went for it.. :o  I held back hoping Paul would realise his error and drop back in line but he didn't...  :-\  Once Paul dived in the pits on the opening lap to serve his stop n go, I had a clear track ahead of me.  

My setup felt very good and the opening 20 laps went well.  But the longer the race went on, the hotter I became and the more gears I missed.  :(  One of these occasions was enough to let Gary through.

Lap after lap I was able to follow Gary, but once we hit traffic I slowly lost touch.

On about lap 38 I came across a lot of traffic, so I decided to jump into the pits early.  When I left the pits I was amazed to see that my 5.5 second lead had been completely wiped out and that Dave was now 4 seconds up the road.   :'(  Stupidly I pushed too hard on cold tyres (another mistake - shouldn't have changed them) and spun.  With that error, all chances of a podium had gone. :(

The next 40 laps was a boring affair... I pushed hard but I was no faster on fresh rubber...  ::)

Congrats to Gary on a faultless performance.  Also well done to Mike and Dave for their podium places...

After having not a lot of warmup time, I was surprised not to get further into the 42's in qualifying and this consigned me to 6th on the grid. Oh dear!  It wasn't looking promising for a podium place this time.

Gained 2 places at the start, one when Brendan had his moment at Paddock and then when Paul took his stop-go.  Then it was trying to keep up with Dave, and I wasn't succeeding!

When he pitted at half distance I knew he had run lighter and I was going a lot further before I pitted, so I piled on all speed in  the hope of closing the gap.  My stop would be short which would help too.  Dived into the pits on lap 53 and rejoined right alongside Dave!  Dave regained the place at Graham Hill but I could see Darren was a long way back, so I had to keep up this time and see if I could force an opening.

I got a chance when Dave and Blunder had a misunderstanding about lapping and Dave got on the inside kerb and nearly spun.  I went between them like a rat up a drainpipe and then had the unenviable task of holding Dave off for another 13 laps.

2nd place will do very nicely thankyou!  ;D

Well done Gary for the win, that tightens that championship up considerably!

Results up.

Quite relieved to maintain my 100% podium record after seeing the grid, but a bit annoyed at losing 2nd, especially to Mike who I probably can't realisticly catch in the championship now. :-\

The new build has definitely rendered my old setups worthless, so in practice I started from scratch with the baseline and dipped into the high 42s. Bettered my practice time in qually but was still only quick enough for 5th. ::)

Start was crazy; I realise now that Darren held back trying to help Paul, but that was probably the wrong thing to do as it just put Paul further ahead, and bottled the rest of us up, which is what caused Brendan's big moment (and also caused me to rub Gary into Paddock). Once the leader hits the gas he's got to stay on it! ;)


Still not sure how that happened - I ended up taking more fuel than I had planned as it was looking too tight for comfort, and I had a slow getaway from my box too, so I was quite shocked to see how much time you'd dropped. ???


That was a wee bit exciting wasn't it! :laugh:


So frustrating - I absolutely had to beat you to stand any chance of taking the title. I knew Blunder was at least one lap down on everybody else so I decided to risk a big lunge up the inside into Druids to lap him and he closed the door after I was committed. :-\ Mostly my fault I know but unfortunately I think that for practical purposes that's game over for me in the title race. :'(

I was the opposite as I tried the new baseline one and your shared one and just didn't get on with it at all. Instead I took my Mid-Ohio one and tweaked a few things and it felt comfortable again so that's what I stuck with.

You do realise that you drop 2 scores? Mike is effectively only 32 points ahead of you at this stage, the same amount as the difference between 2nd and 3rd in one race. It's Gary you need to worry about most - well done m8   :thumbup1:

Indeed, when the dropped scores are taken off, Gary is leading comfortably at the moment.

Thanks for importing the results last night.

Apologies for my absence, I'll be back next week as long as my PC is behaving ::)

Oops.  ::)

Cheers Darren, you're a Gentleman.  Sadly I was too much in my own little World to figure out what you were doing.  Once the pace car had peeled off I figured we were supposed to go.  I normally go when the car in front of me goes.  It went so I went.

Qually was pleasing though.  That lap I just hooked up every corner.  I was surprised Gary wasn't ahead as I know he's quicker than that and in the end was slightly disappointed to miss pole by two thousandths.

In the event this season's been a real learning curve what with pitstops, pace car starts, setups and the like so I just swore, made a mental note to read the bloody rules and switched to damage limitation mode.  I'm good at that now as I've had a lot of practice.

At least the car was straight and I didn't end up driving a fuel tanker this time so my pace was good.  I started catching the tail of the field and found I was quick enough to actually be able to overtake people, which is a novelty.

Oily proved troublesome.  I caught him fairly easily but he was defending beautifully.  I could get right up behind him round Druids but wasn't quite fast enough to get alongside anywhere that mattered.  In the end he went wide at McLaren and I was off after John.

At this point Gary caught me and I pulled over to let him through down the Cooper Straight.  I saw Brendan following him through but took the pragmatic view and didn't risk a fight into Surtees.  As it was a couple of laps later he tangled with John and I slipped past both of them into Druids and was away.

I took my stop very late as I wasn't sure I'd be able to turn off the refuelling and didn't want to spend long running with a heavy car.  In the event I managed to do it down the pitlane with the keyboard balanced on my knees (Oooer...) so just changed tyres.  Despite decent pace I'd not managed to get enough of a gap to jump Simon and finished 6th.

Overall I enjoyed that.  Good qualifying, good race pace and lots of overtaking.  Just the one mistake but I'll learn from that.

The new build has definitely brought the Radical towards my setup.  The real-world style setups I use work a lot better now than they did and the tyre temperatures actually seem to make sense now.

Zandy next.  I'm carp there.

Congratulations to Gary on a fine drive.

Paul
:)

Have to say this continually baffles me with iRacing builds. I hear people say how much the new build has changed a car and I sit there driving as normal not being able to feel any change from the previous build at all. I wonder if they just keep giving me the alpha version whilst upgrading the rest of you. ;D The Radical feels absolutely no different from "before" to me.

Maybe you should stop driving in welding gloves? ;)

In many cases I'd agree with you but something this time has made a real difference to the Radical for me and available evidence suggests it's the tyre damping.

I have to agree with Paul..  The Radical has been improved with this latest build.  Before if you got the Radical slightly sideways the pogo effect would kick in and it would be almost impossible to recover.  Now the pogo effect has almost gone and the Radical is drift-tastic :)

Even i was enjoying how easy it was to catch it at times.

Does anyone have the replay puh-lease?

Yeah was good to have you there Spanner - for a moment it felt like we were on our way to a proper team presence again!

I enjoyed it but also found it immensely frustrating being so far off the pace. Lost my way completely with my setup in practice, getting lost in all the ones I'd been downloading from the forums and making fundamental changes minutes before the race.

Started from the back and then over-drove my way to 8th'ish before spinning at Clearways trying to chase down John and Simon I think it was. Topped that off with a penalty for speeding in the pit lane at which point I took on yet another load of juice and set three of fresh rubber. A good night's work all in all :)


I've got the replay Pops so can upload it for you later when I'm home if you've not got it by then.

P.s - sorry, not very gracious of me, well done you podium chaps - the standard's really impressive at the moment at the sharp end.

Hi guys, thanks for the congratulations I had a good race last night.

Qually was torrid and I was dissappointed with a lap over half a second from my pb.

However the race was better and with Mr Thurston eliminating himself on the pace lap (I didn't take the mickey much when we went to lunch today, honest!) that left me to hassle Darren. He was driving well though so I concentrated on being neat and tidy and eventually there was an opening out of Graham Hill Bend and I got through on the entry to Surtees. Shame to hear how your race went after that, you deserved better mate.

We circulated together for a while but I slowly pulled out a gap and when Darren pitted I concentrated on some quick laps. This became harder as more people pitted and there were some interesting moments. Mostly however people were being very kind and lapping was fairly risk free.

However for once I made a good pitstop and the final laps were a joy easily keeping the sharks at bay 10 or 11 seconds back.

Well done to all finishers, its a tricky combination this one. Congrats to Mike and Dave and comiserations to Paul Richards, I wish you'd have made it too mate.

Dave you go on fighting Mike for the championship, don't worry about me at all:-)

Anyway it looks like the Sharks have the team championship all sewn up again so congrats on that.

Regards
Gary

I just noticed I've been given 8 points & credited with driving this one.
I did connect to the server for 5 mins during pracy/qual... but was long gone before it got near the race session. ???

It's the thought that counts mate. ;)

More iR favouritism ;) In the SIMBIN games you get zero points if you don't get to the end of lap1 :(

I raised a bug report/feature request with them ages ago so that the importer could distinguish between DNS and a lap 1 DNF and they filed it the same place they file all reports that don't suit them. ::)

It looks like you might be able to tell the difference Dave. In the laps list, those who don't start are listed as 'No data available' but those who do get a table with 1 line but no time.

That's not in the export though...